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Journalism about pwnage

Treasures of Montezuma Blitz: Tyrannical Bejeweled Clone Fun

Now, I’ve been playing small amounts of ToM Blitz for a couple of weeks now, and I’ve developed further understanding of the game’s microtransaction system and it’s levelling system. Some of what I found out is a plus, some of it not quite respectable.

First, I found out that once you get to rank 4, there will be locked chains around gems on the board occasionally, which give you 1,000 points if you unlock them, or if there are any on the board at the end of the game. When a gem has a lock it makes it immobile. It cannot be moved at all. This makes it trickier to destroy, because to unlock it, you have to pair it with two other gems. From the small amount of info contained in the in-game help, I’ve found out that there are other secret powerups like this that you can only obtain from levelling up, but they’re very usefull, and you don’t have to pay for them at all. One of the powerups seems to be a time-adding bonus.

Now, the big downside, which balances out the advantages of the secret powerups, is that the higher rank you are, the slower your lives will recharge. The two minutes per life at rank 1 is slowing your fun down enough, but supposedly at rank 7, you’ll have a waiting time of five minutes per life, and so on. That means your waiting time goes up just under half a minute per life.

Now, this is ridiculous beyond measure. They should be rewarding players for being patient enough to stick with their game for that long. But nooooo, they have to stick it up your donkey. And I’m a person who thinks the game is a lot better than IGN would make you believe. But I also believe, that if they had decided to make it a little bit more of a genuine free-to-play experience, this would have been a largely popular and entertaining game. But unless they update their system, this is a game that punishes you for even thinking of trying to stick with it.